Democrat Voters More Open To Third-Party Presidential Candidate

Washington, D.C. – Putting an end to months of speculation about his intentions, Joe Biden gingerly stepped into the 2024 race for the White House Tuesday. At 80, he becomes the oldest major party figure ever to seek the presidency – something that is sure to be an issue in the upcoming campaign.

His age, however, is not the only thing that has voters worried about what a second Biden term might look like. According to data released the day before the announcement by Rasmussen Reports, nearly a third of U.S. voters “would consider” voting for a third-party candidate in the 2024 election.

Alarmingly for Biden, Democrats are more open to the idea, the polling firm reported, than either Republicans or independents.

In the survey, 31% of those who are likely to vote in next year's election said it was “at least somewhat likely they will vote for a third-party candidate.” Of those, 12% said it was “very likely.”

Further complicating Biden's path to reelection, the survey found that 58% of voters under 40 – a key demographic in the president's winning 2020 electoral coalition said they were “at least somewhat likely to vote for a third-party presidential candidate in 2024.” Just 13% of older voters, who tend to lean more toward the GOP, said they'd do the same.

The numbers are likely a shock to the president's political team. His job approval numbers, while never good, have at least appeared to stabilize since the Republicans' return to power in the U.S. House of Representatives divided the government.

That's an opportunity the president should have seized on to present himself as a seasoned negotiator who could bring people together, an image he tried to project from the basement of his Delaware home while campaigning for the nation's top political position. Instead, it seemed to radicalize him, pushing him further to the left and making him more obstinate as evidenced by his unwillingness to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to hammer out a solution to the looming debt ceiling crisis.

Equally alarming for Biden is the fact that 35% of Democrats who participated in the Rasmussen Reports survey said the possibility of their vote going to a third-party candidate was at least “somewhat likely.”

At the moment no significant political figures are signaling they will mount an independent bid for the White House but the group No Labels, headed by former Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan has been making noise about putting one together. Some of the rumored possibilities include one composed of the group's two leaders or one comprised of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Utah Republican Mitt Romney, a one-time national GOP nominee.

It's not clear which major party would be more damaged by a serious third-party bid. “Partisan voters,” the polling firm said, “are more likely to think their own party's candidate will be hurt most by a third-party challenge.” Half the Republicans surveyed, and 48% of Democrats thought an independent bid would be more damaging to their own party than to its major opposition. Unaffiliated voters were almost twice as likely to think a third-party candidate would take more votes away from the Republicans.

The calculations are complex. The damage done to either ticket by a well-financed third-party bid on the ballot in all 50 states could be minimal or considerable, depending on whom the major parties nominate. No third-party candidate has ever won a modern presidential election but there have been a few, most notably Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and H. Ross Perot in 1992 have pulled enough votes away from weak incumbents to have affected the outcome. Biden, if he's not careful, might become the third.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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